The universe is a mysterious place, and humans have only explored a tiny part of it. Recently, scientists found the fastest star in the tiny part of the universe that humans have explored. The star revolves close to the center of the galaxy, which is a black hole. Scientists decided to call the star S4716.
Scientists know it’s the fastest star because it only took four years to make a full orbit around the black hole, which is 23.5 million kilometers across. To complete that orbit in only four years, the star travels nearly 5000 miles every second, or 18 million mph. To allow the scientist to know more about that star, a total of five telescopes watched it, trying to find more details about how and why it’s travelling so quickly.
“For a star to be in a stable orbit so close and fast in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole was completely unexpected and marks the limit that can be observed with traditional telescopes,” said Dr Florian Peissker, lead author of the new study.
The star, called S4716, is part of a cluster of massive stars only discovered relatively recently. The cluster is centered on the black hole at the Milky Way’s heart. Over time, as these stars move in their orbits, their positions can be used to find key characteristics of the black hole. However, with the telescope researchers used, we can barely make out what the star itself looks like.
It is only about 60 million kilometers from the black hole — not much farther than Mercury is from the Sun. The stars in the cluster, however, are many billions of kilometers from it at their closest, starting about a tenth of a light year, roughly a trillion kilometers, away.
Scientists know it’s the fastest star because it only took four years to make a full orbit around the black hole, which is 23.5 million kilometers across. To complete that orbit in only four years, the star travels nearly 5000 miles every second, or 18 million mph. To allow the scientist to know more about that star, a total of five telescopes watched it, trying to find more details about how and why it’s travelling so quickly.
“For a star to be in a stable orbit so close and fast in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole was completely unexpected and marks the limit that can be observed with traditional telescopes,” said Dr Florian Peissker, lead author of the new study.
The star, called S4716, is part of a cluster of massive stars only discovered relatively recently. The cluster is centered on the black hole at the Milky Way’s heart. Over time, as these stars move in their orbits, their positions can be used to find key characteristics of the black hole. However, with the telescope researchers used, we can barely make out what the star itself looks like.
It is only about 60 million kilometers from the black hole — not much farther than Mercury is from the Sun. The stars in the cluster, however, are many billions of kilometers from it at their closest, starting about a tenth of a light year, roughly a trillion kilometers, away.
